Lincolnshire farmer bags record wheat crop

A Lincolnshire farmer is celebrating what could be the UK’s record commercial wheat yield, at 14.3t/ha (5.79t/acre).

David Hoyles, who cut the 8.25ha (20.39 acre) field of Invicta on 10 August at Monmouth House Farm, Lutton, said the top crop was the result of good Grade One silt, ideal sowing and nitrogen timings and a new combine.

“I think it was quite a lot of luck and a little bit of judgement,” he said.

“I top dressed it with 30kg/ha of nitrogen at the end of February, which I think helped with the drought we had – a lot of the later applications didn’t get washed in for quite a while.”

The crop was sown on 28 September at a seed rate of 125kg/ha and was insulated from the cold winter by snow cover.

It was then treated as any other crop, with a total of 160kg/ha of nitrogen.

“We’ve got a new John Deere C670i combine, which has been fantastic. We only lost 50kg/ha over the back – that’s about 0.3-0.4% of the crop, which we’re very happy with,” said Mr Hoyles.

Overall, 31ha (77 acres) of Invicta averaged 12.84t/ha (5.2t/acre) over a weighbridge, with all of the first wheats beating the farm’s previous record of 11.85t/ha (4.8t/acre), set last year.

Peter Busfield, director at Lincolnshire seed merchant Dunns, said Invicta was a good variety for very fertile soil.

“But I’ve never heard of a yield like it in 30 years,” he said.

Although Mr Busfield could not find any official recorded figures, he said he believed the previous UK record was 13.99t/ha (5.66t/acre), set by Gordon Rennie, Midlothian, in 1981.

The world record was set by Mike Solari in New Zealand last year, at 15.637t/ha (6.33t/acre).